Good in Bed (31 page)

“Think nothing of it,” I whispered back.

“And I'm thankful,” concluded Lucy, “that everyone's here to hear my big news!”

My mother and I exchanged anxious glances. Lucy's last big exciting news had been a plan—thankfully aborted—to move to Uzbekistan with a guy she'd met at a bar. “He's a lawyer over there,” she'd said confidently, gliding smoothly over the fact that he was a Pizza Hut delivery guy over here. Before that, there'd been the plan for the bagel bakery in Montserrat, where she'd gone to visit a friend in medical school. “Not a bagel to be had down there!” she'd said triumphantly, and got as far as filling out the papers for a small business loan before Montserrat's long-dormant volcano erupted, the island was evacuated, and Lucy's bagel dreams died a hot molten death.

“What's the news?” asked my mother, looking into Lucy's shining eyes.

“I got an agent!” she trilled. “And he got me a photo shoot!”

“Topless?” asked Josh dryly.

Lucy shook her head. “No, no, I'm done with all that. This is legitimate. I'm modeling rubber gloves.”

“Fetish magazine?” I asked. I couldn't help myself.

Lucy's face fell. “Why doesn't anyone believe in me?” she demanded. Knowing my family, it was just a matter of time before somebody launched into Lucy's Catalog of Failures—from school to relationships to the jobs she'd never kept.

I leaned across the table and took my sister's hand. She jerked her hand back. “No unnecessary touch!” she said. “What's with you, anyhow?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “We weren't giving you a chance.” And that's when I heard the voice. Not God's voice, unfortunately, but Bruce's.
“Good,”
he said.
“That was nice.”

I looked around, startled.

“Cannie?” said my mother.

“Thought I heard something,” I said. “Never mind.”

And while Lucy prattled on about her agent, her photo shoot, and what she'd wear, all the while evading mother's increasingly pointed questions about whether she was getting paid for this or what, I ate turkey and stuffing and glutinous green bean casserole, and thought about what I'd heard. I thought about how maybe even though I'd never see Bruce again, it might be possible to keep part of him, or of what we were together, if I could be more openhearted, and kind. For all of his lecturing, for every time he was didactic and condescending, I knew that he was basically a kind person, and I … well, I was too, in my private life, but it could be argued that I was making my living by being unkind. But maybe I could change. And maybe he'd like that, and someday like me better … and love me again. Assuming, of course, we ever even saw each other again.

Underneath the table, Nifkin twitched and growled at something chasing through his dream. My eyes were clear, and my head felt cool and ordered. It wasn't as if all of my problems were gone—as if any of them were gone, really—but for the first time since I'd seen the little plus sign on the EPT stick, it felt like I might be able to see myself safely through them. I had something to hold on to now, no matter what choice I made—I can be a better person, I thought. A better sister, a better daughter, a better friend.

“Cannie?” said my mother. “Did you say something?”

I didn't. But at that moment I thought that I felt the faintest flutter in my belly. It might have been all the food, or all of my anxiety, and I knew it was much too early to really feel anything. But it felt like something. Like something waving at me. A tiny little hand, five fingers spread like a starfish, waving through the water. Hello and good-bye.

The last day of my Thanksgiving break, before I was going to make the trek back into town and pick up the pieces of my life where I'd left them, my mother and I went swimming. It was the first time I'd been back to the Jewish Community Center since I'd learned that it was the scene of my mother's seduction. After that, the steam room had never felt quite the same.

But I'd missed swimming, I realized, as I stood in the locker room and pulled on my suit. I had missed the tang of chlorine in my nose and the old Jewish ladies who'd parade through the locker room completely naked, completely unashamed, and swap recipes and beauty tips while they got dressed. The feel of the water, holding me up, and the way I could forget almost anything but the rhythm of my breath as I swam.

My mother swam a mile every morning, moving slowly through the water with a massive kind of grace. I kept up with her for maybe half of it, then slipped into one of the empty lap lanes and did a languid sidestroke for a while, thinking of nothing. Which I knew was a luxury I couldn't afford much longer. If I wanted to get things taken care of (and that was the phrase I was using in my mind), it would have to be soon.

I flipped on my back and thought about what I'd felt at Thanksgiving dinner. That tiny hand, waving. Ridiculous, really. The thing probably didn't have hands, and if it did, it certainly couldn't wave them.

I'd always been pro-choice. I had never romanticized pregnancies, intended or otherwise. I wasn't one of those women who sees her thirtieth birthday coming and starts cooing at anything in a stroller with drool on its chin. I had a few friends who'd gotten married and started their families, but I had many more friends in their late twenties and early thirties who hadn't. I didn't hear my clock ticking. I didn't have baby fever.

I rolled back over and commenced a lazy breaststroke. The thing was, I couldn't shake the feeling that it had been somehow decided for me. As if it was out of my control now, and all I was supposed to do was sit back and let it happen.

I blew a frustrated breath into the water, watching bubbles roil around me. I'd still feel better about all of this if I could have heard God's voice again, if I knew for sure that I was doing the right thing.

“Cannie?”

My mother swam into the lane beside me. “Two more laps,” she said. We finished them together, matching each other breath for breath, stroke for stroke. Then I followed her into the locker room.

“Now,” my mother began, “what is going on with you?”

I looked at her, surprised. “With me?”

“Oh, Cannie. I'm your mother. I've known you for twenty-seven years.”

“Twenty-eight,” I corrected.

She squinted at me. “Did I forget your birthday?”

I shrugged. “I think you sent a card.”

“Is that what it is?” asked my mother. “Are you worried about getting older? Are you depressed?”

I shrugged again. My mother was sounding more worried.

“Are you getting any help? Are you talking to anyone?”

I snorted, imagining how useless the little doctor, drowning in her clothes, would be in a situation like this. “Now, Bruce is your boyfriend,” she'd begin, flipping through her ever-present legal pad.

“Was,” I'd correct.

“And you're thinking about … adoption?”

“Abortion,” I'd say.

“You're pregnant,” said my mother.

I sat up straight, my mouth falling open. “What?”

“Cannie. I'm your mother. A mother knows these things.”

I drew my towel tight around me and wondered whether it would be too much to hope that this was one of the few things my mother and Tanya hadn't made a bet about.

“And you look just like I did,” she continued. “Tired all the time. When I was pregnant with you, I slept fourteen hours a day.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. I knew I would have to start talking about it to someone, at some point, but I didn't have words ready.

“Have you thought about names?” my mother asked me.

I gave a short, barking laugh. “I haven't thought about anything,” I said. “I haven't thought about where I'll live, or what I'll do …”

“But you're going to …” Her voice trailed off delicately.

“Seems that way,” I said. There. Out loud. It was real.

“Oh, Cannie!” She sounded—if it's possible—at once thrilled and brokenhearted. Thrilled, I guess, that she'd get to be a grandmother
(unlike me, my mother was prone to cooing over anything in a stroller). And brokenhearted because this wasn't a situation you'd wish for your daughter.

But it was my situation. I saw it then, that moment, in the locker room. This was what was going to happen—I was going to have this baby, Bruce or no Bruce, broken heart or no broken heart. It felt like the right choice. More than that, it felt almost like my destiny—the way my life was supposed to unfold. I just wished that whoever had planned it would drop me a clue or two about how I was going to provide for myself and a child. But if God wasn't going to speak up, I'd figure it out myself.

My mother stood up and hugged me, which was gross, considering that we were both wet from the pool, and her towel didn't quite make it around her front. But whatever. It felt good to have someone's arms around me.

“You're not mad?” I asked.

“No, no! How could I ever be mad?”

“Because … well. This isn't the way I wanted it …” I said, briefly letting my cheek rest against her shoulder.

“It never is,” she told me. “It's never just the way you think that it'll be. Do you think I wanted to have you and Lucy down in Louisiana, a million miles away from my family, with those horrible army doctors and cockroaches big as my thumb. …”

“At least you had a husband,” I said. “And a house … and a plan …”

My mother patted my shoulder briskly. “Husbands and houses are negotiable,” she said. “And as for a plan … we'll figure it out.”

She didn't ask the $64,000 question until we were dried off and dressed and in the car on our way home.

“I'm assuming that Bruce is the father,” she said.

I leaned my cheek against the cool glass. “Correct.”

“And you're not back together?”

“No. It was …” How could I possibly explain to my mother what had happened?

“Not to worry,” she said, effectively ending my attempts to think of an appropriate euphemism for sympathy fuck. We drove past the industrial park and the fruit and vegetable stand, over the mountain, on our way home. Everything looked familiar, because I'd driven past it a million times, growing up. I would swim with my mother early Saturday mornings, and we'd drive home together, watching the sleeping towns wake up, on our way to get warm bagels and fresh-squeezed orange juice and have breakfast together, the five of us.

Now everything looked different. The trees had gotten taller, the houses looked somehow shabbier. There were new traffic lights at a few of the more dangerous intersections, new houses with raw-looking wooden walls and torn-up lawns on streets that hadn't existed when I was in high school. Still, it felt good, and comfortable, to be riding beside my mother again. I could almost pretend that Tanya had stayed in her obsessive-compulsive codependent ex-girlfriend's apartment and out of my mother's life … and that my father hadn't abandoned us so completely … and that I wasn't in my current condition.

“Are you going to tell Bruce?” she finally asked.

“I don't know. We aren't exactly talking right now. And I think … well, I'm sure that if I told him, he'd try to talk me out of it, and I don't want to be talked out of it.” I paused, thinking it over. “And it just seems …I mean, if I were him, if I were in his position … it's a lot to burden somebody with. That they've got a child out in the world. …”

“Do you want him in your life?” my mother asked me.

“That's not really the issue. He's made it pretty clear that he doesn't want to be in my life. Now, whether he wants to be in …” I stumbled, trying to say it for the first time, “in our child's life …”

“Well, it's not completely up to him. He'll have to pay child support.”

“Ugh,” I said, imagining having to take Bruce to court and justify my behavior in front of a judge and jury.

She kept talking: about mutual funds and compound interest and some television show she'd seen where working mothers set up hidden video cameras and found their nannies neglecting their babies while
they (the nannies, not the babies, I presumed) watched soap operas and made long-distance phone calls to Honduras. It reminded me of Maxi, prattling on about my financial future.

“Okay,” I told my mother. My muscles felt pleasantly heavy from the swimming, and my eyelids were starting to droop. “No Honduran nannies. I promise.”

“Maybe Lucy could help out some,” she said, and glanced at me when we were stopped at a red light. “You've been to your ob/gyn, right?”

“Not yet,” I said, and yawned again.

“Cannie!” She proceeded to lecture me on nutrition, exercise during pregnancy, and how she'd heard that vitamin E in capsule form could prevent stretch marks. I let my eyes close, lulled by the sound of her voice and the turning wheels, and I was almost asleep when we pulled into the driveway. She had to shake me awake, saying my name gently, telling me that we were home.

It was a wonder she let me go back to Philadelphia that night. And as it was, I drove home with my trunk stuffed with about ten pounds of Tupperware'd turkey and stuffing and pie, and only after giving her my solemn promise that I'd make an appointment with a doctor first thing in the morning, and that she could come visit soon.

“Wear your seat belt,” she said as I loaded a protesting Nifkin into his carrier.

“I always wear my seat belt,” I said.

“Call me as soon as you know the due date.”

“I'll call! I promise!”

“Okay,” she said. She reached over and brushed her fingertips against my cheek. “I'm proud of you,” she said. I wanted to ask her why. What had I done that anyone could be proud of? Getting knocked up by a guy who wanted nothing else to do with you wasn't exactly the stuff she could brag to her book-club friends about, or that I could send in to the
Princeton Alumni Weekly
. Single motherhood might be getting more acceptable among the movie-star set, but from what I'd seen from my divorced colleagues, it was nothing but a hardship for real-life
women, and it certainly wasn't a cause for celebration, or pride.